USDA: Number of Food Stamp Recipients Reached Record High in 2012

The number of Americans on food stamps climbed to an all-time peak last year, according to data released by the Department of Agriculture.

An average of 46.6 million people received the benefits each month last year, with the average number of households that received them totaling 22.3 million. In 2007, just 26.3 million people received food stamps.

It is to be expected that big states would have the most participants given that they have the largest populations.

But on a percentage basis, Washington, D.C., with a total population of 617,996, had an average of 141,147 recipients, or 23 percent of its population, receiving benefits monthly. That compares with only 15.5 percent for Texas.

Wyoming had the least number of participants, 34,347 out of a total population of 576,412, only 6 percent.

In the Weekly Republican Address Saturday, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., ripped the Agriculture Department for what he called its aggressive program to put more people on food stamps, Daily Caller reports.

Sessions voiced disdain for the Agriculture Departments’ claim that “each $5 in new [food stamp] benefits generates almost twice that amount in economic activity for the community.”

Sessions offered a response to that. “Isn’t a better goal to help more Americans find good-paying jobs, to have the pride and self-respect that comes from that?” he asked. “Isn’t this a superior form of compassion that has a more solid moral foundation?”

But President Barack Obama won’t let that happen, Sessions says.

The U.S. government spent a record $80.4 billion on food stamps in fiscal 2012 — up $2.7 billion from fiscal 2011.

According to the Monthly Treasury Statement by the U.S. Treasury Department, the government spent $77.6 billion on food stamps — formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) — in fiscal 2011.